Saturday, May 12, 2012

Day 5 - 11th May 2012

We arrived back to our hotel on Honolulu from the Big Island of Hawaii at 10pm tonight after a 4:30am wake up call in our hotel. It has been an interesting tour with lots of positives and a few negatives. But first - the attached photos are from the top: Rainbow Falls near Hilo on the Big Island----------------- The next photo is the Volcanic Queen orchid which sells for $20,000 USD located at the Orchid Farm, Volcano (yes this is the name of the village on the Big Island)--------------------------The third photo is the Kilauea Caldera - a very active volcano crater--------------------------------------The fourth photo is Kilauea Iki Crater (the smaller crater next to the big Kilauea)-------------------------- the fifth photo is Anne on the Mauna Ulu lava flow that was alive back in 1974, and ----------------------------------the bottom photo is the Thurston Lava Tube (carved out by lava many years ago. As you can see with the majority of photos we had spent some time on Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. It was the highlight of today's tour. The journey from Honolulu Airport to Hilo took 45 minutes flying time with Hawaiian Airlines. The tour company Polynesian Adventure Tours put us at the back of a Boeing 717 aircraft. For an ex-RAAFie such as I sitting 400mm from a 15,0000 RPM turbine designed to lift 20 tons of aircraft is not a good position to be in. But wait yet, the Tour Company had separated us and fourteen other members of the tour party on the journey back. Beware for anybody going to book a tour with this company if going to Hawaii. They couldn't organise a good time in a Chinese joss house!!!
The lunch they offered to us was served in an alfoil pack - in a cafe at Volcano!! Notwithstanding these negatives the tour guide was excellent. His name was John and he spoke in almost a whisper and monotone, however, his dry wit was quite humourous. One comment he made was that anybody who build their home on a slow moving lava flow should be wiped out of the gene pool - to be there when he said this was good for a laugh and worth repeating. Well that's it for us tonight we are writing this at the end of a long day but tomorrow we intend sleeping in - happy Mother's Day for all those good mums in Oz. Cheers.